


Violet

by Bullfinch



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Dissociation, Fight Scenes, Friendship, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-18
Updated: 2016-03-18
Packaged: 2018-05-27 11:29:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6282817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bullfinch/pseuds/Bullfinch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Six months after arriving in Kirkwall, Fenris has finally begun to settle down.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Violet

**Author's Note:**

> Please take note of the violence warning before you read.

“I’ll see you tomorrow morning!”

Hawke waves, grinning as he turns his back and retreats down the narrow alley. Fenris finds that he, too, is smiling and can’t quite seem to stop. Perhaps the wine—Varric’s birthday, after all, and he insisted on treating them to the very best. Or perhaps simply the evening as a whole. Fenris heads for the stairs, chuckling to himself as he remembers Isabela’s gift, a tub of beard wax— _not planning to grow a beard anytime soon, Rivaini,_ Varric had said, and she replied, _it’s not for your face, it’s for your chest!_

The night is pleasantly cool, and there aren’t even any nobles about to lift their eyebrows at him as he walks through Hightown back to the mansion. It isn’t even particularly late, but he’s quite tired, and as soon as he returns he strips down to his underclothes and crawls into bed—excited to sleep, yes, but also to wake up tomorrow morning. Hawke is meeting a contact on the Wounded Coast, and he declared that since they’d be there anyway there was no reason not to have a picnic, as the summer will be ending soon and it’s best to savor it while it lasts, and Aveline volunteered to bring sandwiches, and Anders said he would supply the wine. Fenris was unsure what to offer; but he has blankets and cups aplenty hidden away in this dusty old mansion, so that will be his contribution.

With an amused self-chastisement he realizes his excitement is preventing him from going straight to sleep. Instead his gaze wanders the bedroom. He’s been here six months but still hasn’t decorated it, so the only ornaments are the housewarming gifts he received when he first moved in: a gold-leaf deck of playing cards from Varric on the table (currently lain out in yet another failed game of single-player Diamondback), a model ship from Isabela on the bureau (he thought he’d broken one of the masts until Isabela admitted she’d broken it herself and didn’t want to tell him), a watercolor on the wall from Aveline of the bay at sunrise (bought off one of her friends in the guard, and the amateur quality rather shows through but Fenris likes the colors).

And on the side table next to the bureau, a little clay pot holding a lush cluster of Nevarran violets. When Hawke gave it to him six months ago it bore only a single bloom; but there are a dozen now, all bunched together, and it should probably be moved to a larger pot. Fenris decides to buy one and repot the flower. He thinks Hawke would like to see how much it’s grown.

But he should be getting some rest—Hawke likes an early start on the day. So he wraps the sheet tighter around his bare shoulders, squeezes his eyes shut, and takes long, slow breaths, although the smile takes some time to fade.

——

Rustling. Close, in his room, next to him.

He lurches awake, his senses clumsily shedding the inertia of sleep, and rolls away. Something coarse brushes his hand and snags his fingers. He slips them out, terror cascading over him. Rope. A net. It’s a net.

Sharp, tearing pain in his other arm, and he yells. What is it? Clutches the wound, a thin prong dug in just below his elbow—a hard yank, and he’s dragged off the bed and onto the floor. He lashes out high with a heel, feels a knee buckle, hears a grunt. The shadowed shape above him staggers, and the tension on his arm goes slack. He takes the opportunity to free his arm from—

A hook tied to a sturdy rope. Like a grappling hook, only with five prongs instead of four, curved wickedly back so that pulling will only dig them in further. Blood spurts from the hole in his flesh.

The shadowed shape is a man, heavyset, silhouetted by ambient light through the gauzy curtains. And coming for him still. The man lunges, and Fenris scrambles back up onto the bed, where there’s another one waiting for him. A length of rope wraps around his throat and cinches tight. Fenris gasps, clutching at it, kicking out as the one with the hook tries to get in close. How many? Two here, more at the periphery of his vision. Three, four. Four, and he’s alone. It’s hopeless. They’re armed and he isn’t. But he has to try.

He reaches back, finds his attacker’s face, and jabs at his eyes. The man curses in the trade tongue, and the line around his neck slackens. Fenris gets fingers under it and slips it off over his head as the man seizes his wrist. Fenris arches, levering into one more jab. There’s a pained yell, and the grip on his wrist disappears.

Just as one clasps around his ankle. He twists, breaking the grip, rolling to the end of the bed, planting a foot on the ground—

A hook lands in his calf, and a hard pull drags him off the bed and across the floor. Fenris grabs the table leg as he slides past and whips it at the other man who’s diving at him. A _thunk,_ and the man stumbles back as playing cards shower to the floor. Still the hook in his calf, and Fenris folds himself up and slides it out of his flesh just as a hand closes in his hair and yanks him to his feet.

But he’s still holding the hook, and he buries it in the hunter’s neck.

No time to pull it out. It’s torn from his grasp as someone grabs him by the shoulder and waistband, whirls, and slams him into the bureau.

Once, twice, three times, his head whipped back and forth, the ancient wood groaning under the impacts. Then he’s thrown to the floor. His skull bounces off the stone, and he rolls onto his bare stomach, dazed. Pain in his thigh—deep, deep, and he cries out, reaching down for it, only for a hook to land in his forearm. Both lines pull tight, yanking his arm and leg in opposite directions.

He yells, pressing his face into the cool stone floor.

Heavy weight on his back. He just manages to cover his head as the club strikes him. Blows thump down on his arm, glancing off his skull. His attacker realizes that he won’t be knocked out like this, so the blows move lower, raining down on his back and ribs. Trying to beat him into submission. If this keeps up it’s going to work. Fenris pulls desperately on the hooks holding him captive. The one in his thigh is deep, too deep to come out, but the one in his arm—he wrenches against it, once, twice, feels his flesh tearing, three times—

The hook rips out of him, and he plants his hand, gets a knee under him, and flips over, raising a block. The club thwacks into his forearm, and he twists at the waist, levering off the floor as he delivers a punch to the man’s nose.

Blood bursts warm over his knuckles. The man’s head snaps back, and Fenris heaves him to the floor, only for another jerk on the hook to tear at his thigh and drag him forward again. He moves with it, rolling his feet, slamming into the hunter.

Weapons. He needs a weapon. He fumbles at the man’s belt, finds the handle of his club, and draws it just as the hook rotates in his leg and hikes it off the ground. That pain offset by another sharp prong landing in his back above the shoulderblade, but Fenris twists away as the line pulls taut and it rips straight out of him.

An elbow smashes into his nose. The impact blinds him for a second, and he lashes out wildly, feels something catch on the tip of the club, hears a grunt. The man forces Fenris’s arm out to the side—

Fenris steps in and headbutts him.

The man wheels and crashes to a knee, the rope falling from his hand. Fenris tugs the hook from his leg just as he’s tackled to the ground from behind. The hook is trapped between their bodies, and he manipulates it, slicing up his own hand before he manages to sink the prongs into the man’s belly. A scream of pain. Fenris starts to crawl out from beneath him, groping for the club, finding it—

—flipping on his back as another hunter looms, his line stretched out between his hands for choking. Fenris whips the club into his kneecap. He shouts and buckles; Fenris drags his legs free and scrambles aside as the one whose club he stole charges and swipes at him, missing.

For a second they stand there, Fenris backed up against the windows, the two men each with their hooks in hand, predatory eyes locked on him. In the pause the pain flares to life in his limbs and back, and with effort he puts aside. He cannot think about it now.

The hooks lash out, one right after the other. Fenris ducks the first and bats the second away with his club. One of the hunters rushes at him. Cut off on his right by the bureau, Fenris darts left behind the bed. The second hunter’s already scrambling over the bed—nowhere left to go, and Fenris jams himself back into the corner, striking out, getting the second one in the mouth as the first comes forward with his hook brandished.

Fenris tries to kick him in the gut, but the man grabs his foot and pulls, jerking him off-balance. Fenris drops the club to catch himself on the edge of the bed—and yells as the man embeds two curved prongs deep in his thigh. The second is up again, and as he lashes out Fenris reaches up, grabbing blindly, feels a thin metal point pierce his palm and slide through. He wrenches the hook away from its owner and lurches forward, levering down from his hip so the first hunter has to drop his leg. Fenris jams himself between the man and the bed, grasps the hook—pointing backwards out of his impaled hand—and brings it up under the man’s jaw.

The prongs dig deep, provoking a guttural gurgle out of a ruined throat. Then the second hunter’s club smashes into the side of Fenris’s head, and he crashes to the floor, dragging the first man down on top of him. Frantically he frees his hand and the hook—warm blood spurting from the holes onto his cheek—and as the body is lifted away and the second man appears, Fenris jams the hook prongs-first into his face.

A high scream, the man’s club falling onto Fenris’s chest as he clutches at his impaled face. Fenris snatches up the club and attacks wildly, terrified, his blows driving the hook deeper until the man collapses on top of him, still screaming. Fenris drags himself out from beneath and clubs the man’s head one, two, three, four, five times, until the screaming stops, and then again, six, seven, eight, nine, he loses count. At last the club slips from his grip.

Silence. Fenris kneels there, breathing hard. The pain will not be ignored any longer, and it breaks over him so strongly his throat tightens against a sob. The last hook is still stuck in his thigh, and with trembling fingers he reaches down and pulls it out, unable to stifle the whimper that escapes him as the metal slides from his flesh—

Movement at the edge of his vision.

He whirls, knocked immediately on his back on top of the two bodies. A hunter straddles him, roaring, his club clutched in both hands as he brings it down on Fenris’s raised arm, striking so hard Fenris is sure his bones have broken. A stream of words rises to his ears—his own words, he realizes, a babbled string of _“please, please stop, don’t hurt me”_ as if that will change anything at all. His other arm is trapped against the stone wall, the hook still clutched in his fingers.

The club bashes into him. The pain shoots all the way up to his shoulder, a deep, seething burn. Fenris rocks, freeing the trapped arm, and thrusts the hook upwards into the man’s throat, twisting it.

A stutter in the assault before it picks up again. Fenris is crying out in agony now, but he continues to shield himself because he must, because he has done all he can to fight and now the best he can do is survive. Then the clubbing begins to slow, until at last the man slumps forward, collapsing.

Fenris gasps as the hunter’s weight knocks the breath out of him. He shoves the body off with his unbroken arm and crawls away, out onto the open floor, and curls up on the stone.

But only for a moment before he sits up to check himself, the holes in his flesh, to see how bad they are. No spurting of blood. Only oozing. Not deadly. He will survive.

The hunters are another story. A quick scan tells him that the one at the end must have been the man he got in the gut earlier, who came back to take his revenge. The others…two with hooks in their necks, the third with his head bashed in. Dead. All of them.

Something gleams in the moonlight.

Gold leaf. A playing card, one of Varric’s, crumpled under a wayward boot. The rest are littered across the floor, bent, folded, or spattered with blood. At the foot of the bed the watercolor lies with its frame intact, but the painting itself is torn down the middle—a wayward hook must have dragged it from the wall. Next to Fenris’s foot there’s a single mast, snapped in half, and the model ship a few feet away, the hull smashed, the delicate rigging a mangled mess. Knocked from the bureau when that hunter slammed him into it.

Beneath the side table the shards of the clay pot lie scattered, clumps of soil strewn between them. Light purple petals dot the wreckage. Fenris spots the mess of torn green stems, ground under a careless heel.

The roots are still attached—crushed, but there. Fenris crawls over, gathers them in his cupped hands, scooping up some bits of soil. He can still save it. But now—there might be more of them coming for him. He has to hide.

The pain in his wounds has grown distant for some reason. A battle calm, perhaps. It is welcome. He tiptoes down the stairs and pads lightly through the halls. There is a linen closet in the south wing of the mansion, amongst the many empty rooms for which he’ll never have any use. Still cupping the ruined violet in one hand, he opens the narrow door. The closet is perhaps half-full; below the lowest shelf is a stack of towels, but there is space enough for him, and he crouches, wedges himself into it, pulls his knees to his chest. Then he reaches up and closes the door.

There is no light here. The soil is grainy against his palm. His own breathing is loud in his ears, and he tries to quiet it. He must listen for intruders.

He clasps the torn-open hole in his arm absently and settles down to wait.

——

He does not know how many hours go by.

He does not sleep. That is a skill, not sleeping. It saved his life on Seheron more than once. The pain helps. His arms and legs throb. His back. His smashed nose. The darkness sits with him. Time passes. He can tell that, even here. The house is silent. His breathing is soft and unobtrusive. There are no intruders. Not yet. Not yet. He must wait.

Three resounding knocks.

The metal knocker at the front door. Hunters would not knock. It must be someone else. Oh. It might be morning. Perhaps it is Hawke.

Fenris gropes for the handle and opens the door. His knees are stiff, his injured legs protesting as he stretches them out. He climbs to his feet with care. Then he realizes he still isn’t wearing anything except his underclothes, so he takes a towel from the shelf and drapes it over his shoulders. That will have to do.

Morning light filters through the curtains as he goes down the corridor. Safe, then, for now. He weaves a little as he goes, and must pause a moment when he feels lightheaded. Strange. In the main hall he realizes that he still holds the maimed plant cupped in his palm; he deposits it on the center table and tidies the soil around it. Another three knocks.

“I’m—“ Fenris coughs, his throat dry, and tries again. “I’m coming.”

He goes to the door, limping slightly, and reaches for it—that’s the broken arm, the flesh purple now and swollen up to twice its usual size. He hadn’t noticed in the dark. So he uses his right hand instead, a shock of pain shooting up his wrist from the hole in his palm as he grasps the knob and turns it. “Good morning.”

Hawke, with Aveline behind him. Their smiles collapse into stricken horror. “Fenris?” Hawke sounds like the wind’s been knocked out of him. “What happened?”

Fenris looks down at himself. He’s still undressed except for his underclothes and a towel, and he’s got blood all over, although— “Some of it isn’t mine,” he explains.

Hawke glances backward at the Hightown streets, then slips past Fenris into the atrium. Aveline follows him inside, pulling the door shut. “Who did this?” she asks urgently.

“Slave hunters. They had a net. And hooks.” He gestures in the direction of his bedroom. “They’re all dead. I killed them.”

Hawke reaches out, pausing halfway—a request for permission, and Fenris nods automatically. Hawke lifts his broken arm with care and examines the torn-open wound in the swollen flesh. “These have stopped bleeding. When did they come?”

“In the middle of the night. I was asleep, I—I panicked, I—lashed out, I didn’t know what else to do—“ His gaze slips over Hawke’s shoulder to Aveline.

Her face is set in a hard frown. “They invaded your home and tried to abduct you. It was self-defense, Fenris. No one’s going to arrest you for killing them.”

 _They invaded your home._ Hawke murmurs something, but Fenris doesn’t hear it. _They tried to abduct you._ The hook buried in his leg, dragging him off the bed and across the floor. The club coming down on his arm, breaking his bones, coming down over and over and over—

A convulsive shiver runs through him. Hawke is saying something. “—really bad, you need help—“

Fenris shoves him away and shouts, _“Don’t touch me!”_

Hawke stumbles back and freezes; then he raises his hands, keeping them in plain view. “All right. I won’t.”

Fenris finds his eyes pricking and his nose burning. Humiliating. He claps a hand over his mouth in case he embarrasses himself by breaking down.

“Fenris…you’re hurt. Badly. I think you’ve lost a lot of blood. Would it be all right if we brought Anders up here to heal you?” Hawke asks.

Fenris tries to take some deep breaths to calm himself. His first instinct is to refuse, but Hawke’s face is drawn in worry. Then it is probably serious. “Yes,” Fenris mutters.

Hawke relaxes a little. “Thank you. Can I clean the blood off of you?”

Fenris nods.

“Good. Then let’s get you to a washroom.” He comes a little closer, his hand raised in front of him; Fenris nods again, and Hawke rests a hand on his back, guiding him into the main hall.

Aveline goes with them and sets down her paper sack on the center table. “Those are the sandwiches. Try and eat some if you can.”

For the picnic. The picnic they were supposed to have today. It won’t be happening anymore. Fenris hugs himself. Aveline turns, heading back to the front door to go fetch Anders. Fenris stares at the paper sack. She must have worked hard. And she already works so many hours. Only—this happened instead—

Hawke guides him to the washroom.

Fenris steps out of his underclothes before being asked—they’ve got blood on them too. Hawke’s worry has ceded to a fragile calm; the agitation shows through, still, but the seams hold. He is eminently careful, maneuvering around Fenris’s wounds to leave the new scabs intact. The wet cloth is cool on Fenris’s skin. Despite Hawke’s caution, he still winces now and then; the wounds are deep, and even the lightest pressure disturbs them, shifting the damaged flesh. Hawke straightens and holds Fenris’s face, wiping his lips and chin. Fenris’s eyes flick down as the caked-on blood comes away.

At last Hawke steps back. “I think that’ll have to do for now. Anders won’t be here for another hour or so…do you want to get some rest? I can make up one of the guest bedrooms.”

Rest. Fenris thinks he would like that. He nods.

They go to the south wing. Hawke helped him sort through the house early on, and he moves with confidence. There are extra clothes in the closet, which he hands to Fenris; made for humans, not elves, but they’ll do. Then he gathers sheets and blankets from the closet to make the bed. Fenris watches while he dresses. He can’t go back to his own bedroom. There are still corpses there. And everything is destroyed. Blood all over the floor, and Varric’s playing cards ground underfoot. Isabela’s ship smashed. Aveline’s painting torn. The violet. Those things were all he had, really. The only possessions he’s ever cared about. But the hunters came for him, as they always will. The pain is worse now than it was during the night. The wounds in his legs burn when he shifts his weight, and the broken arm throbs angrily.

“There.” Hawke lays the last pillow down. “How’s that?”

Fenris goes up to the bed, pulls the covers back, and hesitates.

Then he turns and wraps his arms around Hawke, pressing close to his chest.

Hawke wavers, thrown off-balance; but then he steadies and embraces Fenris without any questions or expressions of surprise.

They stay like that for a long moment. Fenris doesn’t know what to say to justify this. He isn’t sure why he’s doing it, only that he wants to, or needs to, or something along those lines.

“Do you want to sit down?” Hawke asks softly. “It might be more comfortable.”

Fenris nods, then breaks away.

Hawke sits back against the headboard, and Fenris sits sideways against him, wrapping both arms around him again. Hawke holds Fenris gently but with no reservations or awkwardness. He’s solid and warm, and his heartbeat thuds slow and strong under Fenris’s ear.

Fenris feels safe. He shouldn’t. He was attacked. He was nearly captured. His belongings were destroyed, and he was injured badly.

He feels safe. He shuts his eyes to listen to Hawke’s heart, a steady reminder that he is not alone.

——

“Fenris?”

Faint rumbling against his cheek.

“Fenris? Anders and Aveline are here.”

He blinks, squinting.

And sits up straight, disentangling himself from Hawke, wincing at the pain when he moves. “I—I fell asleep. I’m sorry, I did not meant to.”

“It’s all right.” Hawke’s smiling. “I didn’t mind.”

“Heard you were attacked.” Anders, standing in the doorway. “I…I’m sorry. That’s terrible.”

Aveline shoulders her way past, carrying the paper sack of sandwiches. “You were supposed to make him eat something, Hawke,” she says, reproachful.

“Sorry, my mistake.”

Anders steps forward. “Fenris, is it all right if you take off your clothes so I can see the wounds?”

The wounds. Yes.

He strips off his shirt and trousers and sits on the edge of the bed. Perhaps worse to see them without any dried blood to excuse their ugliness, the holes plugged up with red-brown clots, the long tear in his broken arm crusted over with a cracked yellow scab. The flesh beneath is bloated to comical proportions and purple-black with bruises. On his thigh, too, the area around the deep hole is swollen, the surrounding skin stippled in dark red.

“Oh, Maker,” Anders mutters, and sits on the bed beside him. “All right, let me start with that arm.”

Aveline comes up and thrusts a sandwich at him, lifting one imperious eyebrow. Yes. Food. Fenris accepts her offering.

He takes a bite while Anders works. He had been afraid his markings would interfere with Anders’s magic—they still do, now and then, and he can’t figure out why or how to stop it—but they remain dormant here. The swelling begins to diminish under the white glow of the healing magic. The tension on the long tear relaxes, soothing the pain a little. A gentle pressure at his back—Hawke’s palm resting against his bare skin.

Meanwhile Aveline looks on with her arms folded tight and her lips pressed together. Ashamed? Why would she be…Fenris follows her eyes to the sandwich sitting forgotten in his hand. Oh. She had thought he did not like it. He takes another bite to assuage her.

He eats as Anders continues, watching the clots and scabs cede to new flesh. The sealed punctures are still red-pink and fragile, not to mention sore, but they’re whole. Fenris rubs his thigh. The dark bruise is still there.

At last Anders sits back with a sigh. “Think that’s all of them. How d’you feel?”

Fenris stares at the long, crusty scab down his arm. Little flakes of yellow fringe the skin below.

“May I have a drink of water?” he says.

“I’ll get it.” Hawke slides off the bed.

The absence of pain resembles numbness. Fenris scratches at the edge of the scab, yellow crystals and dead skin coming away under his thumbnail.

“It feels better,” he answers.

“Good.” Anders stands. “That’s good to hear.”

Hawke returns with a pitcher and a cup of water. Fenris drinks it down; Hawke refills it, so he drinks that too. The Aveline folds her arms. “All right, here’s what’s going to happen. Fenris, you’re going to get some rest. I’ll make sure the bodies of the men who attacked you are properly disposed of. Hawke, would you stop by the Hanged Man? Varric said he was going to prevent this sort of thing, and he’ll want to know it’s not working.”

“Er—I suppose I can do that.”

“Good.” She fishes in the paper sack on the night table and hands another sandwich to Fenris. “Here. You’ll need your strength for healing.”

Then she and Anders take their leave, heading out of the room. Fenris holds the sandwich in his hands.

Hawke lingers.

He plucks at the hem of his shirtsleeve absently. “If there’s anything else I can do for you—“

“I want to stay with you,” Fenris blurts out.

He does. He doesn’t want to be alone with the corpses of the four people he murdered upstairs in the place where he used to sleep. He doesn’t want to be terrified that they’ll come again, with more, six or seven or eight, with hooks that won’t come out of him this time, and they’ll drag him behind them through the streets of Hightown as he cries out in agony and no one will care or do anything about it—

“Well, I can’t imagine Gamlen would agree to that,” Hawke says.

Fenris stares at his knees.

“But maybe…would you like it if I stayed here for a bit?”

Fenris looks up sharply. “I—yes. Yes, I would like that.”

“Good. Then it’s settled.” Hawke grins. “Have you got any spare bedrolls?”

Fenris rises and finds himself smiling. “I have a better idea.”

Together the two of them manage to wrestle a mattress from the next room over through the doorway and flop it on the floor. Fenris must sit down afterwards and wait for the deep throb in his new-healed wounds to subside. Hawke falls all over himself to apologize; Fenris smiles again and reassures him that he bears no fault.

For the rest of the morning Fenris rests. In the afternoon he stretches to start the wounds healing faster; then he helps Hawke cook dinner, and after they’ve eaten Hawke makes up the mattress on the floor and Fenris crawls into bed again.

As he lies there he finds his eye drawn to Hawke’s bare shoulder, one powerful arm curled around the pillow. Fenris has seen Hawke sleeping before, of course, during longer trips into the Vimmarks that required a few days’ travel; but not like this. Not the two of them alone, not Hawke here sleeping on his floor in order to protect him or even just to make sure he doesn’t feel afraid.

“Hm? Something wrong?”

Fenris realizes Hawke has caught him staring and flips onto his other side. “No! Nothing is wrong.”

“All right. G’night, Fenris.”

“Good night.”

——

The time passes too quickly.

During the day Hawke goes out to visit the market or meet with clients or do a quick job. The first two days Fenris stays home to recuperate and has dinner ready by the time Hawke is back; the third and fourth days he goes out as well, unwilling to let himself be caged up inside the mansion any longer. But returning home with someone else—having someone else to fill the empty rooms with movement and laughter, even a simple quiet presence, is something Fenris loves dearly, though he knows it cannot last. Still, the knowledge when he climbs into bed at the end of the day that he is not alone, to know that he is home and as well there is a friend here with him…

He wakes sometimes during the night and rolls over just to see Hawke’s sleeping form on the floor below. As he drifts off again he holds the image close in his mind.

The fifth day Hawke meets Fenris at the Hanged Man with an apologetic look on his face and reports that his mother wants him to return, purportedly because she misses him but more likely for fear that without his watchful eyes around Gamlen’s going to start stealing their things and pawning them for coin.

Fenris knew it could not last. But that it was possible at all is enough, and he reaches out and places his hand over Hawke’s. “Thank you for staying with me.”

They dine together one more time up in Hightown before Hawke gathers his things and departs. Fenris stands on the steps and waves him goodbye, watching his broad-shouldered silhouette retreat into the gloom of dusk, fading into the summer haze before he turns a corner and disappears.

Then there’s no one else there anymore, and Fenris steps back, pulling the door closed behind hm.

The house is empty again.

Fenris goes again into the guest room. The extra mattress is still on the floor, and he lies down on top of it, pulling the sheets over himself and closing his eyes. He is afraid that without Hawke’s presence he will not be able to sleep tonight but thinks he might be able to do it here, because the sheets and pillow still smell like Hawke and even the memory might be enough to make him feel safe. He lies there for a few moments with eyes closed, taking deep, slow breaths, pulling the rumpled fabric closer around his shoulders.

Then he sits up with a great sigh. That isn’t the way to do it. Varric swore to reinforce his warning with a few more twisted arms, and Aveline had the bodies removed and the room cleaned up just for him. The best way to defeat his fears is to face them.

Upstairs.

His bare feet make no sound on the stone steps. The house is silent. Empty again. The bedroom door is closed. He hovers there in front of it, his fingertips resting on the handle. What if he was wrong? What he misheard, and Aveline has not actually removed the bodies yet, and they will still be there when he enters? Soft and crumpled, congealed blood stuck to the holes in their necks and faces? The room destroyed, the floor still sprayed with ugly red-brown?

He depresses the handle and enters all at once—and then stops.

There are no bodies, true, but still the sight is jarring. This cannot be his room. The curtains have been replaced by flowing sheets of blue-white gauze, and the bare stone floor is covered in the center by an elaborate red carpet—ratty, true, with half the fringe torn off, but its beauty remains. Neither are the walls bare anymore. On the left a tapestry of some grand Orlesian city, the shades of red and gold marred only by an expansive splotch of brown at one edge; and on the right a depiction of a band of Grey Wardens fighting an Archdemon (this one is rather shorter than the one on the left, with several Wardens cut in half and the Archdemon’s foot missing).

His table has been set upright again, and he wanders over. There is a new deck of playing cards, the stock firm and the colors brilliant, displaying the coats-of-arms of a number of the Marches noble houses. On the bureau he spots a lustrous conch shell with…some carving—he goes over to inspect it, realizes abruptly what it is, and sets it down. Beautiful in its own way, he supposes, if one is not too shocked by the substance of the image. On the wall where one watercolor hung are two now side by side, a sunrise and sunset over the Vimmarks, he thinks (he isn’t sure what the bluish spot of paint above the rising sun is supposed to be—some secret symbol known only to the artist, perhaps).

And on the windowsill sits a white clay pot holding a half-dozen torn stems. In the center a tiny sprout pokes out, green and new.


End file.
